It might be recommended to loosen your soil in some parts of the world and in some forums, but I certainly don't make that suggestion. By softening, are you referring to rototilling? That's a big no-no. I don't have a sprinkler system in San Antonio and have managed to maintain St Augustine in a lot worse climate than Houston. The only problem that will wipe out St Augustine is not watering long enough when you water. The amount of water needed for St Augustine also happens to be the amount of water needed for bermuda if you want the bermuda to look nice. If you don't care whether the bermuda looks nice, then you can get away with no water at all. THAT is where bermuda differs from St Aug. St Aug dies without water while bermuda only goes dormant. Bermuda will not grow immediately to the north of south-side fences, so find a different solution for that location. Something else you might consider is calling in a landscaper. Oops! Never mind. Just reread that part about the budget. Rather than scalping the lawn, rent a verticutter, power rake, or slit seeder. Any one will work. These machines will barely cut into the surface of the soil but they remove all the plants. Then rake or blow all that stuff away before seeding. After you seed, roll the seed down with a rented roller. It is very important to get good contact with the soil. Now the most important suggestion I can give you is to WAIT TO SEED BERMUDA until late May or June when the soil is fully warmed up. Seeding bermuda now is a waste of seed and time. In the mean time sit on your hands. Find a copy of The Bermuda Bible online and memorize it. The author, Texas-Weed, will be along here soon and reply to this with additional, and perhaps conflicting, tips for you. He's the man when it comes to bermuda, though.

Much good advice here. I would add (this is my soapbox, people around here have already heard this but) that you have to watch bagged products, especially the cheap composted manure variety, for quality. Around here many of the bags appear to be full of soil, river muck etc. and not compost. It should be black, fluffy and composed of organic matter, not look like black (or any other color) dirt. Glad you found the free stuff at the air base. You also have a Craigslist in Montgomery, in which I found the following ad for free horse manure compost: http://montgomery.craigslist.org/grd/1803797671.html There's also a Wanted section you can post on. Also, there are 10 Freecycle groups in Alabama, none in Montgomery but perhaps one of the towns is close to you. www.freecycle.org. It's a great concept, you ask for or offer things for free. I would do the aeration when the soil is not dry and not soaking wet. Too dry, the machine can't make cores, too wet, it doesn't work well either. Usually early spring, before all the heavy rains, when it's a little drier. I'd till compost in to your bed(s), being careful of existing roots as mentioned. Then add liberal organic mulches to further amend over time. For the lawn, in fall you can put an inch of fine compost down, and plant grass seed right in it. It will grow like gangbusters.

Cooler weather will stop the progression of the disease but dead grass won't come back. I have 100% KBG and they spread fast once conditions improve. Bunch type grass don't spread fast to fill in dead spots. You should try to keep the grass alive, even if they are diseased so they can come back with cooler temperature. What you need to do depends on what disease you are battling. I had Summer Patch which is a root disease. So I watered it lightly every day or two. If you are dealing with a foliar disease, this type of watering probably aggravates the problem. Summer patch will most certainly come back next year but if you have a foliar disease, it may not. Everyone's situation is different so no one can tell you on the internet what you need to do. One thing I learned over the years is there is no easy way to learn about this stuff, You need to spend hours and hours reading, examining, experimenting, etc. You can get some basic knowledge here, but your soil, your grass, your weather is different from mine. DcHall swears by cornmeal but some others say it does nothing. It may work for you, it may not. I did 2 apps of Heritage/Companion combo in August and I believe it stopped Summer Patch. Within a week, sickly green color was changing to "healthy" green. 2-3 weeks later, dead spots were filling in.

You can do it now. Just get one of the lawn patch kits (carried by any box store) or a small bag of seed and fill in the area. The patch kits work quite well for small areas as they usually come with a cellulose mulch product that protects the seed and help keep it moist until germination. Also protects against weed seeds blowing in. Most will have some starter ferts included as well. If you just get a bag of seed you will need to go through all the steps like you were seeding or overseeding a lawn. The kits just shortcut that for you.